Up the creek

Lane Creek as it disappears under Pomodoro Restaurant in Wellington.

Plans unveiled at public meeting next Wednesday

Where shall the creek flow? Lane Creek drains farmland northeast of Wellington as it meanders into the village under several buildings before it empties into Lake Ontario. In the spring of each year, large mature trout battle the runoff current to lay and fertilize their eggs.

In the spring of 1936 the culvert guiding the creek under the village’s Main Street became blocked with debris; soon a puddle formed. As the snow melted the puddle became a flood, inundating many of the businesses along the Main Street as well as basements as far west as Consecon Street.

Now the culvert has reached the end of its useful life. It is deteriorating and must be repaired or replaced.

The preferred solution, according to the County engineering group, is to reroute Lane Creek under Wharf Street and avoid the segments currently running under privately owned buildings.

The municipality has set aside $640,000 for the project. It will use money it receives from its portion of gas taxes to pay for the work.

But this plan has met resistance, ranging from businesses worried about disruption to Main Street, to those worried about the plight of the spawning fish, to others who would prefer to see $640,000 spent elsewhere in the County.

The project is undertaken as a Schedule A+ project under the Municipal Environmental Assessment Act—this means according to the rules that govern such projects, the work is considered to have a minimal impact on the environment, thus avoiding a complicated and expensive process.

Municipal officials must, however, hold a public meeting to explain the plan and hear concerns. They will likely hear a few.

Questions such as: “It’s been running there forever, why change it now?” And “Don’t they know there are fish that use the creek?” Others will be keenly interested in when and how long traffic on and access to Main Street will be affected.

No matter how bad it gets—the work is not likely to match the disruption caused by the flood in ’36 or the redevelopment of Main Street in 1964 when it was described in the Ontario Intelligencer as a “sea of mud and the merchants are losing much of the summer traffic, but there were no complaints.”

Main Street was being ripped up and replaced by a wider thoroughfare, including parking. That project promised a brighter future for the village. The current culvert project offers at best mitigated liability exposure for the municipality. Hardly the stuff of optimistic slogans.

The County’s engineering department will host a public meeting next Wednesday evening (May 29) at the Town Hall to unveil its plans and explain the rationale for the preferred solution.